


Cling

by StrictlyNoFrills



Category: Little Voice (TV 2020)
Genre: Angst, Bess is a mess but she has every right to be, F/M, Humor, Samuel's last name is Gardener, and Samuel loves her anyway, because I said so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-17
Updated: 2020-11-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:01:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27598615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StrictlyNoFrills/pseuds/StrictlyNoFrills
Summary: They haven’t had a fight in weeks. Not since that kiss at the bar.Samuel supposes that means they were due.
Relationships: Bess King/Samuel, Bess King/Samuel (Little Voice)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 8





	Cling

**Author's Note:**

> I love them. I just want to wrap them up in warm blankets, give them mugs of hot tea, and the happiest of happy endings.

They haven’t had a fight in weeks. Not since that kiss at the bar.

Samuel supposes that means they were due.

They are two passionate people – though not because they are artists; they are artists because they are passionate – so it is inevitable that they will clash. He thinks he may have been holding his breath the entire time things between them were peaceful. A sort of honeymoon period from finally letting out into the open all of the things they had both been tucking away.

Bess bursts into her apartment, and Samuel follows a few steps behind, their dustup not stopped by the end of their journey here but delayed in order to be continued in what little privacy the thin walls here could provide.

“I am not pushing you away!” Bess insists, picking up right where they left off as soon as she stormed off of the bus, Samuel hot on her heels.

Ella lifts her head and whuffs at them in mild curiosity before laying back down, already deciding that their argument is not worth getting excited over; she’s seen scenes like this between the two of them too many times before.

“You are. You do. You _always_ do.”

Bess scoffs, rolling her big brown eyes. “I think ‘always’ is a bit of an exaggeration.”

“Exaggeration isn’t really my thing,” Samuel notes, leaning back against the front door. “And you have to admit you have a pattern. Once is an incident, two’s a coincidence, and at this point, we’re _way_ past three.”

Bess twitches and then stares at him. “Did you just make a Teen Wolf reference at me?”

Samuel shrugs, refusing to be embarrassed. The soundtracks for that show are _fantastic_ , and Samuel respects good taste. “Maybe. But, you know, you’re the one who recognized it, so I think that says more about you than it does about me.”

Bess makes a disbelieving noise in the back of her throat and shoots him an eloquent look, and in the end, they both wind up laughing at this ridiculous turn their latest fight has taken.

As far as breaking up arguments go, it’s not the most conventional method, but hey. It works.

Samuel steps away from the wall and comes closer; close enough to take her hands in his own.

“What is it this time? What are you so afraid of, Bess?” he asks, his voice soft and patient. Coaxing. “I’ve already told you: I don’t scare easily. So, whatever it is, it isn’t going to make me run.”

Something flares in her eyes at that, and Samuel tilts his head, feeling like a dog catching a scent, because something he just said struck a chord within her, and now all he needs to do is be patient.

As he expects, she says nothing for a good, long while, and Samuel waits her out, because Bess always has to come to decisions in her own time. If anybody has ever looked at Bess and thought that they could get her to do something she wasn’t good and ready to do, they must have been the biggest fools on the face of the planet. She’s the most stubborn woman Samuel has ever met. The world does not move her; she stands still and forces everything else to bend around her until she decides it’s time to do something new.

“I’m scared that you’ll leave,” she admits finally, her shoulders already tightening against the future blow of his abandonment. “I mean, why wouldn’t you? Sure, you say you don’t scare easy, but everybody leaves, sooner or later. Some of them come back, some of them don’t, but in the end, everybody. Everybody but Prisha and Louie and Ella – they all leave me.”

He searches her face, saddened, but not surprised. She doesn’t want to rely on him being there, because she thinks one day she’ll turn around and look for him when they are on stage and he won’t be there, gazing steadily back at her, or she’ll reach for his hand as she walks down the sidewalk or sits on a bench, and it won’t already be there, held out for her to take.

She has no idea, can’t possibly have any way of knowing, that it’s just never going to happen. He can’t see a future for himself that does not have her in it. Or perhaps it isn’t that he can’t – he can easily imagine Bess taking a different path, growing beyond him and leaving him behind – it is that he does not want to. The idea of not seeing her, of not being a part of her life, even of no longer getting into knock-down, drag-out fights with her over stupid stuff that never matters in the long run, causes a physical ache in his chest, and he won’t lie and try to say the thought of it hasn’t kept him up some nights, staring at his ceiling.

The fact is, he is far more afraid of her leaving him than she is of him leaving her. He simply refuses to give in to that fear and push her away preemptively the way she does everyone else in order to protect himself.

Samuel isn’t built that way. When he is afraid of losing someone or something, he does not push and he does not run. He protects. He cares. He clings.

It would be nice if, every once in a while, Bess could cling back a little, but Samuel has known who she is almost from day one, and he’s not about to ask more from her than she can give, so until she reaches that point, Samuel will cling on tightly enough for them both.

“What would it take to convince you that I won’t?”

Bess is silent again. There’s something fragile but daring in her gaze, and Samuel finds it, a devoted student of her many expressions and moods.

“Okay, then,” he nods, before tilting up his chin ever so slightly. “Challenge accepted.”


End file.
